Abstract
The graphic registration of gastric or intestinal peristalsis is usually obtained from an animal with an opened abdomen while in a saline bath and more or less under the influence of an anesthetic. This method hardly reproduces the normal condition as the act of laparotomy reduces and modifies greatly the peristalsis. In some instances the movements of the stomach have been studied from a gastric or œsophageal fistula and in the rabbit the movements can be studied graphically, as it has been discovered by Auer, in the perfectly normal and unanesthetized animal.
In the April meeting of last year we presented some tracings showing the effect of magnesium upon gastric and duodenal peristalsis. At the present time we wish to explain more fully the method we have used and to demonstrate the act of obtaining the peristaltic tracing. This rabbit was operated four days ago. The movements of the stomach and of the duodenum are transmitted to the kymograph by means of catheters which carry at one end small balloons of thin rubber. The balloon end of one catheter is introduced and secured in the pyloric part of the stomach and that of the other in the descending part of the duodenum through openings made directly in each of these parts.
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